Non-Tech Skills You Ignore in Quality Assurance- Enhancing Performance Beyond Technical Expertise
Typing
Typing… Seriously?
Typing is an untold skill that is pretty much a universal skill for anyone to master. Be it development or manual testing. Often testers are required to document the test plan before testing. During discussions with the developer, there could be a lot of information to take in. Jotting down with blazing-fast fingers comes in handy. Recently I came across testing of a revamp of an architecture. With 0 experience in the old or the new one, it was a lot to take in during the explanation by the developer. My typing skills gave me a hand to quickly take down some edge cases, important information, configurations, etc…during my KT(knowledge training). The points noted were not in their best structure for anyone other than me to understand. I later elaborated on the written snippets of information which were very useful to write my plan and test cases later. It also helped me to clarify something that even the developer himself did not have any context about.
How to get started?
It starts with having a typing routine. Most of us type with 4–6 fingers. To type fast it is highly recommended to use all 10 fingers. 15 minutes of typing for 30 days straight will show a considerable amount of improvement. Touch typing will increase the speed of our fingers and whatever the mind thinks will already be on the screen without consciously searching and typing each key on the keyboard. These are some websites that helped me in practicing typing:
Keybr is my preference for someone who is starting in typing. It starts with easy letters at first and then it increases as we hit a considerable amount of speed. On signing in, our progress could be easily tracked, and also helps in motivation to type faster. Keybr doesn’t have punctuation and numbers to practice, hence on completely typing all the letters switching to monkey type is recommended to practice real-world scenario typing with punctuations and numbers. Since we already have experience in touch typing it will be easy to get hang on punctuations and numbers easily. It is not about the tool we use but it is mainly about turning up every day to spend some time typing which will leverage the skills of documenting the tests.
To know more about documentation in testing I would recommend reading these:
- The Importance of Documentation in Software Testing: What to Document and Why
- Boosting Testing Efficiency with Obsidian: A Tester’s Documentation Journey
Verbal and Written Communication
Communication is directly proportional to better testing efficiency. There is no non-tech skill such as communication that will be very handy not just for testing but also for any jobs in tech. Testers need to communicate with developers so often to discuss bugs detected and also edge cases. It is even more challenging to communicate through written messages when someone is working from home. It is important to overshare during written communication so that there will be more information that will give more context to what exactly needs to be shared. I will be discussing some online tools to take communication to the next level so that a lot of huddles (audio/video call facility in slack) can be reduced.
Use Screenshots and Screenrecords
Screenshots and video snippets are amazing ways to show a bug or demonstrate a feature without waiting for both the party to make time for a meeting. These tools help in creating screen records and sending them via Slack or any other communication medium used by the company.
Documentation
I can’t stress more on documentation. If it is an established company or growing startup, documentation is very essential to know how the product or feature is tested. Documentation not only helps new users to know about how testing happens in the company but also documenting offline can be a great warehouse of knowledge that travels with you forever. Know more here and here.
Audio over Chats
Sometimes it is easy to use a voice message than a chat. This idea was given by my company’s co-founder, who prefers voice messages over chat as he doesn’t want to waste time typing. Chat requires a lot of work to draft because:
- need to think a lot to draft a message that is more informative and less.
- takes time to type it out.
- takes even more time to check grammar and spelling mistakes.
- more prone to ambiguity due to unchecked spelling. Lot many chatting services have a voice chat feature that could be very much useful and comes in handy to quickly reply.
I know your voice sucks to hear 🙉, but it’s definitely worth it.
Curiosity
An underrated but worthy non-tech skill that is often overlooked. A curious tester not only is better at finding defects in the product or service. By asking questions and seeking to understand how things work, it also helps in identifying areas that may be prone to defects and issues. In the startup I work I get to know more about the architecture itself during my testing phase. Being in a microservice architecture, I have visibility into the applications that are interconnected with the service I am currently testing. I tend to learn more about different applications and even the point of failure of the application.
Curiosity in Tech
Curiosity to ask the developer for edge cases can save time in figuring out the edge cases ourselves. This doesn’t mean exploring edge cases ends there. These edge cases help to leverage the skills of testing similar scenarios that may arise in the future.
Especially in a startup environment curiosity will give you a ton of knowledge and tools to test better and faster. Check out a tool I use for documentation here and more tools are on their way!
Being curious means not just questioning whatever comes to mind; it is advised to self-analyze the question beforehand so that it benefits and does not waste your time or the time of others in the process. Using AI tools like ChatGPT to learn a little beforehand can also help to understand what someone is saying.
Tip: Being an intern or fresher allows you to ask trivial doubts without the fear of judgment or being perceived as lacking knowledge.
Remember
The desire to explore every nook and cranny of the software can lead to spending excessive time on certain areas, potentially causing delays in overall testing progress. While curiosity can be beneficial in uncovering additional issues, it can also result in scope creep and misalignment with project timelines and objectives. It’s important to balance your curiosity with a rational and methodical approach to ensure unbiased testing and accurate reporting of issues.
Happy Testing :)
Author: M M Kishore
